Most of the time I have been with clients, apparently successful but when you actually go deep, understand their financials, you realize they are almost on the drip. Money isn’t on the bank account. Though things could be moving on, the sales are not growing. Cash collections are not happening. The company is in survival mode.
As a leader, you must try to avoid such a scenario. The starting point is to set sales targets for all staff.
Give everybody in the organization a target to sell. This reminds me of Nile Bank when I was starting my career. By then, Nile Bank had a Briton managing director. Each and every staff in the bank was tasked to bring one account every week regardless of their department.
One morning, the head of operations came into the internal audit department where I was working as an auditor and said; “I want an account from each one of you. I know you have relatives and friends. Where do they save their money or bank? I want you to be their champion. Ask them to open new accounts. I will come back next on the same day, and I want to see account opening forms. No excuses.”
As the Head of Operations left our office, our immediate boss turned to us and said; “you have heard him. Though he wants one account, I want you to bring in two.”
I did a simple marketing plan. Wrote down the target people I would meet, picked documents for account opening. I made the process of account opening so convenient for anybody I met. I would request from their their IDs, which I would then photocopy and then ask for the new account opening deposit cash.
I didn’t know that what I was doing was #Way of TheGuerrilla sales. If you sell aggressively like that, you become a guerrilla. Guerrilla marketers do not tell people to come to the bank to fill forms. They ask people to come to the bank to pick their account number and visa cards. They make the whole process so convenient and great.
A simple marketing plan will make a difference. You should have a small budget of how you will implement your marketing plan.Focus on relationships. They are the A- Z of any sale. Otherwise small companies would have collapsed if wasn’t for referrals and relationships.
